Boat carrying ton of marijuana runs aground; search on for 2 men
Two men who ran aground a boat carrying about a ton of marijuana in Newport Beach remain at large, police said Tuesday morning.
No arrests have been made in the Monday morning incident in which a U.S. Coast Guard crew attempted to board a sailboat for a random equipment check as it entered Newport Harbor.
Instead of cooperating, the sailboat crew reportedly veered the boat right and onto the shore of Balboa Island, where it ran aground and they ran off onto the island.
A search of the boat turned up 80 to 90 bales of marijuana, or about a ton, valued at about $1 million, said Virginia Kice, spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Homeland Security is handling the investigation, an Orange County Sheriff’s Harbor Patrol official said.
The stop was considered routine.
“We do safety boardings randomly on vessels,” said Coast Guard spokesman Seth Johnson. “It just so happened that they had a lot of pot on board.”
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lauren.williams@latimes.com
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